The murder of two French envoys on the river Po in the summer of 1541 not only provoked a diplomatic whodunnit round the courts of Europe, but also throws light on attitudes to diplomacy in the Renaissance world. Linda and Marsha Frey tell the story and its implications.
During the early days of UK involvement in World War II, official British films deliberately created a particular view of the air war, perhaps distorting our perceptions of some key phases.
Andrew Fettegree looks at how the life and death of a radical religious maverick points up the tensions between individualism and order in Reformation Europe.
A look into the long-lasting links between Britain and Holland forged during the war.
Ann Hills on an institution dedicated to the history of the Red Crescent and Cross and a humanitarian approach to war.
History Today's special issue on the French Revolution's bicentenary focuses on the new ideas that are illustrating its causes and course. To open, Douglas Johnson considers the arguments about the 'Counter-Revolution' and the Terror exercising French historians of the Revolution in 1989.
To export the Revolution's benefits across Europe was the early hope of the French - but the unenthusiastic response from the liberated peoples rapidly soured the vision. Tim Blanning chronicles that descent from optimism to realpolitik.
Objective memoirs or economy with the truth? Michael Jones sifts for an assessment through a courtier's recollections of power politics in fifteenth-century Europe.
Andrew Roach explores the Romanian struggle for nationhood
J.S. Cummins considers the impact of syphilis on the 16th-century world – a tale of rapid spread, guilt, scapegoats and wonder-cures, with an uncomfortable modern resonance.
